


Embracing Destiny

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Legion of Super-Heroes, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Pre-Capes, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2010-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:45:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st century, a teenaged Clark learns a stunning secret about his own future:  he and someone called "Batman" will be legendary lovers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embracing Destiny

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [命中注定我爱你](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754275) by [Sugar_Punica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugar_Punica/pseuds/Sugar_Punica)



  
Outside the windows of the Legion's headquarters, the Metropolis of the 31st century sparkled and glimmered in bright day-glo neon. Clark Kent rested his chin on his hand and stared out at them. The headquarters hummed around him, full of young, enthusiastic teens with uncanny powers, committed to making the world a better place. Here in the future, Clark was finally surrounded by friends, people like him, people he didn't have to hide his secrets from.

So why did he still feel so alone?

Maybe it was because here he was "Superboy," not Clark Kent. Everyone idolized him--not _him_ , though, not really. They idolized the image of the man they all thought he'd grow up to be--a man Clark sometimes suspected was just a myth from a thousand years ago. But people couldn't seem to see past the costume to the kid underneath, sometimes.

In Smallville he felt like an alien. In the future he felt like a lost kid. Maybe there wasn't any way to reconcile the two halves of his life at all.

If only he could be Clark here for a little bit, not some godling child. If only--

Clark looked out the window at the glittering city, and suddenly a idea struck him. There was no emergency at the moment, so why _couldn't_ he be Clark here?

A few moments later, Clark was walking down the streets of Metropolis, wrapped in one of Brainy's overcoats to cover the golden shield on his chest, his glasses securely on his nose. People shot him some odd looks--glasses didn't seem to be standard a thousand years in the future--but since no one asked for his autograph, he seemed to be in the clear.

It was a strange thrill to walk the streets of Metropolis on his own, staring up at the buildings--he'd never seen his time's Metropolis, but he was pretty sure it wouldn't intimidate him after seeing _this._ Oh, he knew he wouldn't remember it clearly, thanks to Saturn Girl's mental block, but the sense of awe and wonder, that would surely stay with him.

He was still goggling when he came around a corner and found himself staring at a huge banner hanging on a building. A banner of himself--an adult version of himself, but wearing the costume.

A banner of himself kissing someone.

A banner of himself kissing _a guy_.

He and the other man were twined around each other, passion and intensity in every line. The other man was wearing a black costume of something that looked like leather, his black cape swirling around them both. The costume had some sort of cowl that looked like it should cover his face, but it was pulled off so that Clark's-- _Superman's_ \--hands could tangle in his shining golden hair. Clark couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from his face--fine-boned yet strong, with long golden eyelashes that almost seemed to brush his cheeks. He looked like a god of the sun, embracing Superman, and the way Superman was pressing against him--

Clark knew he should probably feel disgusted or repulsed at the idea of kissing a boy. Ma and Pa had told him it was just love, like any other, but he'd heard what the boys at school said about men who didn't like girls that way. Clark liked girls just fine.

But looking at the kiss in the painting made him feel things he'd never felt while kissing Lana or Tinya. It felt thrilling and strange and wonderfully _right_.

"Gorgeous, isn't it? Takes your breath away," said someone near him. Clark looked over to see a woman at what seemed to be a ticket booth smiling at him. He managed to tear his eyes away from the kiss to read the print at the bottom of the banner: _The World's Finest Art: An Exhibition of Superman and Batman Art Through the Centuries._

"Who--who's Batman?" Clark managed to ask through his pounding heartbeat.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "You must not be from around here," she said.

"No, I grew up a--a long way from here."

Apparently his thousand-year-old English sounded exotic enough to convince her. "I didn't think there were _any_ planets far enough away to not know the World's Finest. I mean, it's _only_ the most famous romance of _all time_."

Clark suspected he'd feel very embarrassed about this later, but right now all he felt was a desperate need to learn more about the Adonis he was kissing. "Could you tell me about it?"

The woman beamed. "Superman and Batman are the archeypical heroic romance: comrades, brothers in arms, lovers." She sounded like she was reciting a spiel for the museum. "Our exhibition features the famous painting by Maji Morl which became the template for how the lovers are portrayed in popular culture." She gestured to the banner. "It's called 'The Sun as Dark as Shadow, the Moon in Splendor Bright,' and Morl captured perfectly the balances and tensions between the two heroes, the way they are opposites which contain each other, like the ancient yin-yang symbol."

"How did they meet?"

An amused look. "There are a thousand different accounts. The most common versions have them meeting in Gotham, which was Batman's territory. But some say it was on an exotic pleasure cruise, others while they were children in Smallville." Well, Clark could rule out the second one, at least. He'd have remembered meeting _that_. "Some stories have Batman threatening to kill himself if Superman ever touched him, while others have them as fast friends from the moment they met. But all the stories agree--whether they met as friends or enemies, they came to be the greatest heroes and lovers the world has ever known."

Clark felt like he could look at the painting forever. New details leapt out at him--like the fact that one of Batman's hands was hidden by Superman's red cape. Where exactly was that hand? The possibilities made him start to feel intensely, delightfully uncomfortable.

"Would you like to see the whole exhibit? It's amazing."

"Oh, no, no." Clark suspected if he saw an entire gallery of the two of them, he might expire on the spot. _I'm going to forget this_ , he suddenly realized with a jolt. _Saturn Girl's block will keep me from remembering what he looks like._ The thought was unbearable. He wanted to keep the image with him always. He gazed at the face, the hair pouring across Superman's fingers like sunlight, fixing the details in his mind with a fervent intensity.

And when he went back to Smallville, he found that the image did stay with him, that one memory shining sharp and true in his mind: he and his destined love locked in embrace, his golden-haired love out there waiting for him....somewhere.

**: : :**

The train blasted its whistle and pulled away slowly from the platform as Clark hoisted his backpack and started down the stairs. He saw some postcards in a revolving rack and automatically thought about buying one for his parents before he remembered that they thought he was spending his first spring break at Kansas State studying. he hadn't _lied_ about it exactly, just explained that he couldn't come home because he had so much to catch up on. If they had concluded he'd be staying on-campus, well, he wasn't responsible for that.

Guilt still nibbled at his heels as he stepped out into the streets of Gotham.

He'd stared at the glittering streets of 31st century Metropolis years ago and sworn nothing would ever impress him again, but Gotham was a totally different kind of experience. Instead of clean lines and bright lights, the buildings were mostly of stone and brick, with a faded but genteel air to them. The streets were a bewildering maze of dead-ends and narrow, twisting alleys--and all filled with people, hurrying somewhere, not meeting his eye.

He knew it was hopeless, but he couldn't help looking for a flash of golden hair in the crowd, for the face that he'd kept in his heart for two whole years. Searching the faces that passed by, he hardly noticed that he was leaving behind the shabby-genteel areas for areas that were frankly shabby, then downright grimy. The endless flood of humanity poured by, and he felt disappointment start to drag his steps. As darkness started to creep through the alleys, filling them like heavy purple wine, he admitted he had thought, somehow, that this could be it, the fated meeting between him and Batman. But that was ridiculous, of course. What had he thought, that he'd come to Gotham and just run into him out of the millions of people here--

"Hey, look where you're going," snapped a voice, and Clark realized he'd walked right into someone standing on the sidewalk and sent them staggering.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he stammered. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Obviously," said the man--almost a boy, about Clark's age, with dark shaggy hair and eyes that looked almost purple in the shadows of the alley. "You must be from out of town."

"How did you know?"

The boy looked amused. "No one from Gotham would be wandering in Crime Alley after dark--especially carrying a backpack and wearing a Kansas State jacket." The amusement shifted to something more serious. "You shouldn't be here. It's a dangerous part of town."

Broken out of his funk, Clark looked around and realized what he meant. Without realizing it, he'd wandered into an area of Gotham that looked like something out of lurid crime movie. "Oh," he said, feeling stupid.

"Let's get you out of here," the boy said, putting a hand under his elbow and steering him back toward the better-lighted streets.

Once they were out in the light of the street lamps, Clark could see that he was wearing jeans and a heavy dark-blue sweater. Did he live around here? He seemed to know the area. "Thanks," Clark said. "I guess I'm kind of overwhelmed. I've never been anywhere like Gotham."

"There isn't anywhere like Gotham," his companion said with a touch of pride. "So, where are you staying?"

"I--" He hadn't made any concrete plans, maybe because that would have forced him to admit to himself what a fool's errand he was on. "I don't know."

"It's getting a little late to not have a place to stay, Mr. Kansas State."

"It's Clark. Clark Kent." Without thinking, Clark stuck out his hand.

"Bruce," said the boy, taking it. There was a long pause. "Bruce...Wayne," he finally finished, as if reluctant to give his last name. He bit his lip, with a look on his face like he expected Clark to respond to it somehow. When Clark just looked blank, the wariness went out of his face and was replaced by a glint of humor and a kind of curiosity. "Would you like a guide to the city for tonight? I can show you around and find you a place to stay."

"Um." Clark hesitated. "I couldn't pay you much, I'm sorry."

Inexplicably, Bruce threw back his head and laughed as if Clark had said something delightful. "That's okay," he said eventually. "It's my treat."

**: : :**

Clark watched as Bruce finished up his milkshake with gusto. Clark had insisted on buying dinner if Bruce was going to show him around, and Bruce had acquiesced after another brief hesitation. From the way he'd wolfed down his meal, Clark wondered if maybe he hadn't eaten for a while. He'd been vague about his background, preferring to ask Clark questions about his life in Kansas, and Clark didn't want to pry. He was starting to feel that Bruce was rather like some kind of shy wild animal, high-spirited and skitterish, and he didn't want to invade the sense of inviolate privacy that he carried with him like a transparent shield.

"So, what do you want to see in Gotham?" Bruce asked as he pushed the empty milkshake cup away with a sigh.

"Well..." He should let it go, he really should. He obviously wasn't going to be seeing Batman on this trip. But... "I've heard a lot about Gotham's night life. I know they wouldn't let us into the clubs, but maybe we could just see the outside of some of the more famous spots?"

Bruce's eyes sparked with mischief and he leaned across the table toward Clark as if about to share a secret. "Let's see how much we can get away with."

**: : :**

Flickering red lights spelled out "Body Language" above a shining chrome facade. People in clothing that left little to the imagination streamed in and out of the door, strutting down the street in groups, laughing loudly and groping at each other in a friendly, casual way.

"Welcome to Sin City, East Coast edition," Bruce said over the noise.

"Wow," said Clark. He was too dazzled by the strobing lights to come up with anything more articulate.

"Want to see inside?"

"We can't--" But Bruce was already walking toward the door, casting a laughing glance back at Clark who remained paralyzed on the sidewalk. He pulled out his wallet and showed the glaring bouncer something, gesturing at Clark. The bouncer raised his eyebrows and looked slightly suspicious, but nodded. "Come on," Bruce yelled back at Clark. "We're going in."

The music was deafening--something soulless and loud with a lot of bass. "What'd you show him?" Clark yelled over the noise.

"Just my ID. He said it was okay if you were with me."

"How old are you?" He certainly didn't look much older than Clark, but--

"Eighteen." Bruce sat down at the bar.

"So you have a fake ID?"

"Nope." Bruce was grinning like he'd told a particularly good riddle, but Clark didn't feel like playing along.

"Jedi mind trick, then? These are not the teens you're looking for?"

"Something like that."

"And isn't there usually some kind of cover charge? Don't you have to--"

"--Clark, just relax. It's covered," Bruce said, looking almost irritable, and Clark decided to let it go.

The bartender came over and gave them a questioning look. "Um. Cola," said Clark. Not that alcohol affected him, but he was stretching legality enough already.

"Make it two," Bruce said. The bartender shrugged and moved off. Bruce looked at Clark, who was scanning the crowd of people dancing--well, grinding--and flirting. "Not quite Kansas, huh?"

"We've got nightclubs in Kansas, you know." Batman had looked somewhat older than him in the picture, he could be twenty-one, he could be out there on the dance floor right now. But nobody caught his eye, he felt no tug toward anyone. There were blonds on the dance floor, of course, but none had the golden beauty of Batman, none the self-assured air of heroism.

Bruce made a scoffing noise. "There's no reason to play more-cosmopolitan-than-thou. Gotham's in a class by herself." He launched into an animated discussion of Gotham history and architecture, waving his hands as if that would make it easier to hear him over the throbbing music. Clark could hear him just fine, of course. He couldn't help smiling; Bruce had told him nearly nothing about himself, but he was happy to tell him everything about Gotham. And from the way he talked, Clark started to understand a lot about him in turn: passionate, articulate, a touch pedantic; as dark and intense as the city he clearly loved so much.

"--I can't even hear _myself_ ," Bruce suddenly said. "You're just being polite, admit it."

"No, no!" Clark protested, leaning closer so Bruce could hear him. "You were talking about the Miagani. Go on." In fact, he realized suddenly, he had been so absorbed in Bruce's history lesson that he had stopped scanning the bar looking for someone who might be Batman. Well, no one here had seemed right anyway. "Or maybe we could get out where it's more quiet?"

Bruce's grin was a bit dubious and a touch self-mocking. "You want to really hear me drone on more clearly? Okay, then."

Back out in the cooler spring air, Bruce found a tiny park tucked into a corner of the busy street, a single bench under a spreading tree. They sat and Clark watched the crowds flow up and down the street, couples with their arms linked, laughing. He waited for Bruce to start talking about Gotham again, but instead he stared up into the branches moving in the slight breeze, casting patterns of shadows across his face. "Why did you come to Gotham?" he asked after a while.

Clark shrugged, leaning forward with his arms on his knees, his hands clasped. "Looking for something," he said. "I don't know. It's stupid. I guess I'd hoped I could force the future to come faster. I _know_ things are going to work out, but I'm tired of waiting for it. Tired of not knowing what to do while I wait."

 _"Yes,"_ Bruce said, only that, his eyes fierce. His fists were clenched on his knees; he looked at Clark in something like amazement, something like triumph. _You too,_ his eyes said. _You too._

After a long moment in which the wind blew the tree branches above them and cars honked in the street nearby, a siren drifting in a distant wail through the night, Bruce's passionate gaze shifted into a slightly sheepish smile. "But you didn't come here to listen to me yammer about Gotham, I'm pretty sure." He waved his hand. "Our night of dissipation continues! Pick another bar, any bar," he said. "The world is your oyster, Clark Kent."

Clark waited a moment, scanning the crowd, watching who was going where. "That one," he said, pointing to a doorway of red lacquer in a dark wood wall with no windows. "Destinations" was written in simple gold letters.

"That's..." Bruce hesitated. "Clark, I have to tell you that that's a--"

"We've got gay bars in Kansas too," Clark snapped, feeling sudden heat in his cheeks. "What do you think I am, blind _and_ stupid?" he added as two more men exited the bar arm in arm.

"No," said Bruce, his voice subdued in the dappled shadow. "Neither."

"Have you--got a problem with it?" Clark looked away from Bruce. The answer seemed suddenly terribly important. Clark felt his soul quail at the idea of hearing vicious and ignorant words from Bruce--from someone he'd only known a bare handful of hours, someone he was never going to see after tonight, he reminded himself. But the gap between his question and Bruce's answer seemed to stretch on like a small eternity, filled with trepidation.

"Not at all," Bruce said, and Clark realized there hadn't been any gap, any pause at all. Bruce stood up and grinned at Clark, no reticence in his voice, no disdain in his non-verbals. "Not at all," he repeated, and it was the simplest thing in the world to stand and follow his smile to the scarlet doorway, past the quizzical bouncer who looked at Bruce's ID and waved them through, and inside.

This was more of a lounge than a bar: quieter, darker, more intimate. Bruce chose a curved booth in the corner and Clark slid in next to him until they were side by side, looking out at the club. Something jazzy was playing--piano and strings, Clark didn't recognize it. The waiter took their orders, arching an eyebrow at their virgin pina coladas but saying nothing.

Clark looked around the bar and felt his courage suddenly desert him once more. Everyone here looked very sophisticated and very handsome. The sight of men openly embracing or dancing slowly, their arms around each other and their bodies tight together--he looked down at his drink, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and unsure. He watched his hands shred the little cocktail napkin. What had he been thinking? That the man of his dreams would just walk up to him and sweep him off his feet, whisk him off for a night of passionate lovemaking--Clark realized he must look an idiot, some kind of bumpkin, a total--

"Check it out." Clark glanced over at Bruce, then did a double-take and burst out laughing. Bruce had taken the ridiculous (surely ironic) pink paper umbrella from his drink and tucked it behind his ear. "I don't know, do you think it matches my eyes?" Bruce said archly, fluttering his eyelashes. "Or is it just _de trop_?"

Clark reached out and plucked it away over Bruce's protests, putting it over his head and twirling it like a tiny parasol. Bruce swiped the orange umbrella from Clark's drink in turn; they ended up in a fencing match with the tiny umbrellas, snickering quietly and kicking each other under the table like children, and Clark discovered his self-consciousness had dissolved somewhere along the way. He took a long sip of his drink as the last giggles faded out and looked around the bar with a little more equanimity. The uneasy feeling in his stomach had shifted from nervousness into something else, a kind of excitement. A couple on the floor was dancing slowly, more swaying in each others' arms than dancing, and as Clark watched one dancer's hands drifted down from the small of his partner's back to end up possessively on his--well, his ass, Clark forced himself to think, shying away from childish terms like "bottom" or "behind." His ass. He imagined someone doing that to him, squeezing and pulling him close, and fidgeted uncomfortably on the leather seat. Batman had been dressed in leather, the thought crossed his mind involuntarily, and he bit his lip and resisted the urge to squirm experimentally against the seat some more.

"The other place was too loud and bright," Bruce said beside him. "This place is...more my style."

Clark looked over at him, startled--was that a hint of complicity in his voice?--but Bruce was busy twirling his umbrella between his fingers. "It's more my style too," Clark said, and Bruce's eyes darted up to meet his for a moment, then down again. Just for a moment, but it was enough.

As if that brief glance at unlocked a door, Clark suddenly yearned to break that transparent shield of privacy between the two of them. Who was this strange, dark, beautiful--yes, he was beautiful, Clark thought with the beginnings of a dull ache in his heart--this beautiful boy, comfortable in the worst dark alleys and most dazzling clubs of Gotham alike?

He opened his mouth to ask something, he wasn't sure what, but Bruce was looking past him with alarm in his eyes. "Oh _damn_ ," he hissed. "I was afraid of this."

Clark followed his gaze to where a man in his fifties with a dark suit and a smile like a shark's was watching them from the bar. He met Clark's gaze and raised his glass, his smile sharpening. "What?"

"That's--you don't want his attention, Clark."

"What?" Clark felt like he was a step behind everyone else in this interaction, but an uncomfortable suspicion was starting to gnaw at him.

"He thinks we're here to--you know, go home with a sugar daddy," Bruce said as the man finished his drink and put the glass down. "I don't care if you are, but you don't want _him_ , trust me."

The man was coming toward their booth now, his face predatory and avid. "What do we do?" Clark whispered. "How do we make him go away?"

Bruce took in Clark's panicked expression and looked, for some reason, relieved. Then he put an arm around Clark and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "Go along with me," he said as Clark tried not to show the startled jolt that went through him at the touch of Bruce's breath on his skin. "We have to look like we've already found what we're looking for tonight."

He nuzzled at Clark's ear and Clark felt shudders go through him. Trying to focus, he reached out and grabbed Bruce's free hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing at the fingertips. "Oh," Bruce breathed in his ear. "That's...that's good." Mr. Shark was standing in the middle of the bar now, looking at them with a puzzled and cross expression. Clark slipped one of Bruce's fingers into his mouth. It was cold and damp from the wet glass and tasted of salt and a hint of coconut. Clark ran his tongue along it, drawing it in deeper, and Bruce made a low noise at his ear. He bit Clark's earlobe gently, extracting his finger, to Clark's chagrin. "I think...I think it might be a good idea to kiss," he said.

This seemed like a very good idea to Clark.

He turned his head and met Bruce's mouth in a breathless, awkward tangle of clicking teeth and mashed noses that probably should have been embarrassing but somehow was not at all. After a while--quite a while, actually--things evened out into something slow and languorous and dizzying. Bruce's hand was on his hip and his thumb was--was very, very close to Clark's fly, and this fact would have been the most important thing in the world if Bruce's mouth and tongue weren't currently occupying the number one and number two spots.

The kiss broke after some time, after a few false endings where one or the other of them would suddenly lean forward to get another taste and the whole dizzying exhilarating impossible process would begin once more. Bruce glanced sideways and smiled slightly. "He's gone," he murmured.

"Who?" Clark was nuzzling at Bruce's neck, wishing the sweater didn't cover so much skin. "Oh." He looked up to see that Mr. Shark had vanished. "I...forgot about him," he said, feeling suddenly foolish now that the pretense was over.

"I did too," said Bruce, and kissed Clark again, and somehow it was even better this time. In the middle of the kiss, Bruce shifted suddenly, an almost impatient movement, and Clark suddenly felt his hand resting squarely on a patch of denim with a zipper running down it and a distinctive swell to the fabric. He ran his fingers lightly across the shape of Bruce's erection under the denim, then less lightly, and Bruce made a small, agonized sound. "We haven't found a place for you to stay tonight," he whispered. "Should we...should we do that next?"

"I'm ready to go," said Clark.

**: : :**

By the time they'd found a hotel cheap enough for Clark's anemic wallet, however, the cool night air had cleared Clark's lust-fogged mind a little. He found himself looking around the bare, sparse room with a growing sense of dismay. He had come to Gotham to find his destined love, not to pick up a random stranger on the street.

The thought made him wince immediately: whatever Bruce was, he was far more than a "random stranger." He was smart and funny and driven--Clark could see that in his eyes, the haunted look of someone who plans to do something with their life, someone with a goal and a purpose.

And Clark couldn't-- _wouldn't_ \--end up with him.

Bruce sat down on the edge of the bed, but his gaze was tinged with uncertainty. "Come here?" he said, his voice low.

All of Clark--and some parts more than others--ached to join him on the bed, to strip his clothes off and explore his beautiful body with his hands and tongue, to give and receive pleasure. _Call it practice,_ a cooly pragmatic part of his mind said. _You don't want to be a clumsy virgin when you meet Batman. Enjoy it and learn._

But it was impossible. Bruce was a person who did whatever he did with his whole self, at full intensity. If they only had tonight, he would still give himself entirely to Clark for that night, not holding anything back. He deserved more than someone who couldn't do the same in return.

"Do you believe in fate?" Clark asked, and Bruce's eyes narrowed.

"Like destiny? The idea that your future is predetermined and unchangeable?" At Clark's nod, he shook his head. "I think that's nonsense. We carve our own paths, make our own futures."

Clark bit his lip. "But what if you had seen the future, how things were destined to turn out?"

Bruce frowned. "Then we'd owe it to ourselves as humans to fight it, to make our own way."

Clark remembered the passion in the golden-haired Batman's face, the tightness of their embrace. "Even if it was a good destiny?"

A wry laugh. "Maybe especially then." His eyes gleamed up at Clark, and the temptation to join him on the bed, gather him up and kiss that sardonic laugh into breathlessness, was strong enough to make him gasp. And then gasp again at a new danger: what if by coming to Gotham in search of his fated love Clark had changed the future somehow? He wasn't supposed to be here yet, he had only come because he had brought back forbidden knowledge from the thirty-first century. Clark felt that he was teetering on a precipice, playing with flames that could burn the future to ash, even while desire continued to tear him apart.

Bruce's gaze was shifting slowly from laughter to something quieter and more self-mocking as he studied Clark's face. "This is the most existential brush-off I've ever gotten," he murmured, standing up. "I guess I know the way out--"

"--Wait," Clark gasped, grabbing his arm as he went by. "Please don't go. I can't--I can't be with you like that tonight. I can't explain why. But I don't...want you to go." It was unbearable that he would walk away, intolerable that Clark couldn't talk to him a while longer. _"Please,"_ he said, hearing raw imploring in his voice, not caring.

Bruce met his eyes for a long moment. Clark could see him swallow. Then he shrugged. "The sex was just going to be the icing on the cake," he said lightly. "I was having fun just talking with you. I mean, there aren't many people who'll listen to me talk about Gotham in colonial days."

"You're beautiful when you talk about Gotham," Clark blurted, and to his surprise Bruce flushed pink. Then he grinned.

"Is it okay if I keep flirting with you?"

"How long have you been flirting with me?"

The grin widened. "Since you tripped over me in Crime Alley tonight."

"Then it's okay," Clark said, although his responding smile ached to turn into a kiss.

Bruce sauntered over to the window and opened the curtains. "You've got a great view of...well, of the wall of a warehouse," he said, gazing at the brick. Then he laughed again, this time without bitterness. "It's just as well, I guess," he said. "I don't have any lube or anything."

They talked through the whole night, until the blank brick wall outside the window began to flush rose with the dawn. Clark sat on the bed and Bruce on the ratty little armchair, and they talked about politics and ethics, books and psychology and history. They disagreed sometimes--Bruce thought _Hamlet_ was Shakespeare's greatest, while Clark clung stubbornly to _As You Like It_ ; Bruce insisted on Lennon's genius while Clark argued for McCartney's--but even their disagreements were interesting. "I've never met someone I can talk to like this," Clark said around four o'clock, over the sound of a cat yowling in the alley.

Bruce's smile was more intimate than a touch. "Admit it, this is more fun than sweaty, fumbling sex, right?"

"Um..." Clark blinked at the images that rose up in his mind's eye and struggled to control his breathing.

"Yeah, I didn't think so either," Bruce added blithely, and Clark couldn't help laughing. But he stayed in his armchair and kept his distance from Clark, until the sunlight outside the window was too bright to ignore much longer. "I have to head home," he said, his tone reluctant. "I...didn't want to mention this before, but I'm leaving town this afternoon. Alfred will be worried sick about me. Although he should be used to it by now," he said with a wry twist to his lips.

"Oh," said Clark, struggling to keep his sudden desolation from his voice.

Bruce stood up. "There's just one last thing I want to know," he said. Then with a sudden motion he was straddling Clark, pinning him to the bed. Clark gasped as his erection sprang back into demanding life at the press of Bruce's body against him. "Mmm," Bruce growled in his throat, grinding up against him. "I just needed to make sure one last time that you really were interested. I want to have that to take with me."

His mouth was hovering just above Clark's, and Clark lunged upward to meet it in a wild kiss that might have left them both pinned against the ceiling if he hadn't reined it in at the last second. "I wanted you," Clark moaned. "I _want_ you. So much. I'm sorry."

"Damn," Bruce breathed against his mouth. "You are the most amazing tease." But he was the one who pulled away, he was the one who stood up first, leaving Clark aflame and anguished. "I won't forget you," he said, turning at the door. "Good luck with your destiny."

And then he was gone.

As Clark felt the first sharp hooks of regret set themselves in his heart, he tried to remind himself that he had done the right thing. He had done the right thing. As he wandered a strangely dull and bleak Gotham alone, he reassured himself that at _best_ he would have hurt Bruce badly in the long term (he never doubted for a moment that Bruce would have expected there to be a long term if they'd slept together). At worst he might have altered the future irrevocably. This pain was merely the pain of thwarted physical desire. It would fade. Eventually Clark would wake ready for his destiny, ready for fate to show its hand.

When he realized he was no longer scanning the crowds for golden-haired strangers, but for a last glimpse of dark hair and a sarcastic smile, Clark simply walked to the train station and headed back west.

 _Too late_ , the train wheels mocked, all the long way back.

**: : :**

"--Can you _believe_ Lombard wouldn't let it go? I thought that meeting was going to go on for another three hours! Perry looked like he was going to fire him on the spot, don't you think?" Lois Lane's heels clicked a staccato rattle across the marble floor of the office building lobby.

"Gosh, Lois, I didn't notice." Actually, Clark thought Lois's assessment was exactly correct, but considering it was his first staff meeting at the _Planet_ , he didn't feel comfortable saying so. He let her go first through the revolving door, then followed.

"Good grief, Clark, you must be the most unperceptive person on _Earth_ ," Lois said, rolling her eyes. "So, care to grab some Thai at the corner?"

"Actually," said a smooth voice, "I recommend the Chinese place two blocks down. I know the owner." A figure leaning against the wall folded the newspaper that had been hiding his face, and Clark looked with a dull shock into Bruce Wayne's laughing blue eyes.

"Oh my," said Lois. "You're--you're--" She turned to her companion. "Clark, even _you_ have to know who this is." She eyed Clark, who was staring at Bruce. "You know... _Bruce Wayne?_ He's only on the cover of the Society section every other week."

"I never was much for reading gossip rags," Clark said. _Not until I found out who I'd spent a whole night talking with,_ he added mentally for veracity's sake. That there was a box filled with glossy clippings in Clark's Spartan apartment--a box that also held a blue and red costume, as-yet-unused--was not something he felt the need to share.

Bruce's smile deepened. "I thought as much." He hadn't taken his eyes off Clark yet.

Lois was smoothing her hair. "So, Mr. Wayne, what brings you to Metropolis?"

Bruce held up his newspaper. "By Clark Kent," read a small byline. "I saw Mr. Kent's work in the _Planet_ and decided to stop by. We're old friends, aren't we?" he said to Clark.

Clark couldn't seem to keep the smile off his face. "It's been a long time."

"Four years," said Bruce.

"Four years and three months," corrected Clark.

"Four years, three months, and sixteen days," said Bruce. He put a silencing index finger to Clark's lips before Clark could continue with the hours (ten). "I've come to ask you to dinner."

Lois's eyebrows looked like they were going to take flight. "Well then, I suppose it's Thai alone for poor little me." She leaned in. "Try to get a story out of it, Smallville," she muttered _sotto voce._ "Exit Lois Lane, stage left," she announced, and clicked off.

They did take-out, supposedly because the restaurant was too hot, but really because Clark just wanted to get him alone, be able to focus on his voice without distractions. "Working at the _Planet_. You've done well for yourself."

"Not as well as you have," Clark retorted, pulling little paper boxes out of the bag.

Bruce looked slightly sheepish. "There never seemed to be a good time to mention my background. When you didn't recognize my name...well, I couldn't resist the opportunity to spend some time with someone who'd treat me like just another person, not some poor little rich boy celebrity." He snapped open a pair of chopsticks a bit viciously. "It was nice to have a chance to just be myself."

They ate and talked about anything that long-separated friends might: Clark's new job, Bruce's recent return to Gotham from an extended world junket. Clark found out the mysterious "Alfred" was Bruce's _butler_ , of all things, but the way Bruce talked about him made it clear it wasn't a simple employer/employee relationship at all. He listened to Clark's description of his first week on the job as though it were deeply fascinating. And they talked about what they'd been reading, what they thought of the new police commissioner in Gotham, whether the sweet and sour pork had too much salt. Just simple things. Friendly things.

All the while Clark's heart couldn't seem to slow down and he kept catching himself grinning goofily.

Dinner done, Bruce picked up one of the wrapped fortune cookies and flipped it to Clark with a wry grin. "I don't believe in fate, remember?" As Clark put the cookie down on the table, Bruce added, his voice suddenly low and intimate: "You were in Gotham looking for someone, four years ago. Did you...ever find him?"

"No," Clark said. "After that night, I...kind of lost interest in looking," he added.

Bruce nodded slowly, looking down at his hands. "I've been traveling the world for four years now. I've seen some truly amazing things, breathtaking things. And I found my reaction to all of them was the same." He looked up at Clark, velvet-dark eyes locking with his. "I always thought, _I wish Clark were here to talk about this with._ "

Clark opened his mouth, but he couldn't seem to find any words to say. His expression must have said enough, though, because Bruce smiled slightly. "Why didn't you try to contact me?" he said.

Clark's laugh was short and bitter. "I didn't think you'd want to hear from me after..."

Bruce's smile was like honey. Clark ached to taste it. "Stupid," he murmured. "You're the only person I've ever met who just..." His hands seemed to try and capture something evanescent. "Knew me. Right away. Even before you knew me."

"You could have contacted me."

"I thought about it. God, did I think about it," Bruce said. "But I didn't want to push, I didn't want to intrude where I wasn't wanted." He laughed a little at the sound Clark made then. "But when I saw your name in the paper...I did a little snooping and found out you didn't seem to be seeing anyone, and I...couldn't stay away any longer." His hand hovered above Clark's knee, dropped back without touching him, as though he didn't trust himself. "Clark. I'm planning to make a big change tomorrow. A huge change. Something that will alter my life completely."

"You're finally going to get serious about running your father's business?" Clark smiled to cut the sting of the words, but Bruce just smiled, an oddly private smile.

"Something like that," he said. "I'll tell you all about it, depending on how you--" He broke off and bit his lip, looking almost nervous. "Well, it seemed like a good time to come to Metropolis and ask if you...still believed in destiny." He held out his hand.

Clark felt his breath catch, felt the momentous weight of all the future pressing in on him. There would be no halfway with Bruce Wayne. If he reached out now, Clark would be obliterating his future with Batman, throwing it to limbo, with all the dangers that implied.

But even as he thought it, he knew it was far too late. Perhaps it had been too late four years ago, too late the moment he first saw a dark and solemn boy in a Gotham alley. If he rejected Bruce Wayne tonight, his heart would go with him still, wherever he might travel. He would never be able to love Batman in the epic way he was supposed to. It was already too late for Superman and Batman.

But it wasn't too late for Bruce and Clark.

Clark took Bruce's hand and Bruce--he didn't smile, but his whole face seemed to blaze up, igniting with passion he had kept banked. Clark could feel his fingers trembling. "Clark," he whispered. "I have to tell you. What I'm doing tomorrow, it's--"

Clark leaned forward and caught up his mouth in a long, lingering kiss. "No more talking, love," he murmured, and Bruce's hands tightened on him fiercely at the word. "No more talking about the future. Let's just take tonight."

Bruce looked like he was going to protest, but Clark slipped a hand under his shirt and slid it along impossibly sculpted muscle, and he gasped and fell silent, his own hands unknotting Clark's tie with a single smooth motion. "I won't be content with just tonight," he muttered thickly as Clark steered him toward the bed. "I'll take them all. I'm greedy. I want all your nights, and all your days, and all your futures, all of them."

"They're yours," said Clark, and after that they spoke only of the present, not the future.

At the last transcendent moment, as Clark felt ecstasy start to spill into white-hot completion, he spared one final thought for the golden-haired Adonis he had been destined for. _I'm sorry, Batman,_ he thought incoherently as pleasure coursed through him, _But you could never compete with Bruce Wayne._

**: : :**

Clark lay in the moonlight, staring at his lover's sleeping face, the face for which he had ransomed the future.

He had no regrets.

Bruce was fast asleep, to judge from his breathing and heartbeat. One hand twitched slightly against Clark's bare hip, then subsided.

Clark was glad he didn't need to sleep much. He was content to gaze at Bruce all night, at the way moonlight touched his hair, at the long, sinewy sweep of his legs.

From a dresser drawer, a small alarm went off at a frequency only Clark could hear. He frowned. It had been half a year since his last Legion alert, and he was hardly in the mood to spend time in the future. He wanted to be in the present as much as possible.

But he reluctantly extricated himself from Bruce's embrace. "I'll be right back," he whispered, kissing Bruce's temple. Bruce murmured something but didn't wake. Clark put on jeans and a t-shirt and slipped out onto the veranda.

The Legion's time sphere was hovering there, with Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad in it, smiling. Lightning Lad started to say something, but Clark shushed him, slipping into the time machine. Garth's eyebrows rose as the sphere slipped into the time stream, but he didn't ask any questions.

"What's the emergency?" Clark asked as the Legion headquarters materialized around them.

"No emergency," said Imra cheerfully. "A celebration!"

Indeed, the headquarters were festooned with red and blue ribbons and balloons. "Go Superman!" proclaimed a banner. "Your tomorrow is the day you first debut as Superman," announced Imra as they stepped out of the sphere, "So we wanted to throw you a party!"

"Tomorrow?" Clark asked. "What happens?"

"You know we can't tell you that," she said, kissing his cheek and grabbing a glass of champagne. "But I can tell you it's _great._ "

Everyone was in high spirits at the idea of their hero's first appearance; no one seemed to notice that his heart didn't seem to be in the celebration. At least all his friends seemed to be okay and the world wasn't ruled by an evil dictator because he'd chosen the wrong lover, Clark noted with relief. They'd started the party without him, it seemed, to judge from some of the flushed cheeks and giggling.

"Oh, soon you'll get to meet them all, all the twenty-first century heroes!" Phantom Girl's eyes were starry. "Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl and Red Arrow--"

"--I think it's Green Arrow," Invisible Kid interrupted.

"Red, green, whatever!"

Shrinking Violet clasped her hands together dramatically, gazing upward. "And you'll get to meet _Batman_ ," she announced in thrilling tones. "And you and he will--ow!" She broke off as Brainiac jabbed her. She glared at him, hands on her hips. "Imra's mental block will keep him from remembering the details, Brainy! And I'm _tired_ of never being able to talk about history's greatest roma--ow!"

Everyone laughed at the indignant Violet, except Clark. The world seemed to be buzzing around him, closing in and fading out at the same time. _The future wasn't changed._ And that meant--that meant that he and Bruce wouldn't be together for long. Bruce was going to die, he realized with a shock of anguish, that was the only way to explain it. Bruce was going to die and leave him alone and broken and...

Everyone had kept talking around him, but the sounds made no sense until one question managed to pierce his haze of mourning. "You'll have to finally tell us what he looks like," said Karate Kid, shooting a defiant glance at the fuming Brainiac.

"Who?" Clark managed to ask, and everyone laughed.

"Well, Batman, of course! _I_ say he's got to be a renegade Shaolin master from Asia due to his knowledge of kung-fu, but Violet insists he has to have green eyes."

"But...don't you know what he looks like? I thought--I'd seen pictures of him, and he's blond, right?"

"Oh, he's usually shown that way, but actually we have no idea at all what he looks like," Cosmic Lad explained. "I mean, it makes sense that he'd be blond, right? Since you two are--uh--" He glanced at Brainiac, "--famous teammates and all. You're powered by the sun and have dark hair, he lives in the shadows and has golden hair, it's an ironic contrast and a metaphorical representation of how you complete each other. But he could look like anything, there's no visual record of him at all, unlike you. He could have brown hair or red hair or--"

"--Or black hair," Clark said. Hair black as midnight, spilled across a pillow in the moonlight. Strong, muscled legs on white sheets. A sardonic smile and an intelligence as keen as a blade, and huge mysterious plans for tomorrow. "Black hair and dark blue eyes."

Clark started laughing, a long, sweet bubble of joy, and couldn't seem to stop at all.

**: : :**

He glanced at the clock as he stripped off his clothes: three minutes elapsed. Bruce was still asleep, one hand curled into the empty space Clark had left behind.

Clark slipped into it and Bruce's arms closed around him.

"Mm," Bruce murmured as Clark kissed him. "What are you grinning about?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow," Clark whispered.

The night was still, the future just around the corner, full of potential.

Clark pulled Bruce close and embraced his destiny.


End file.
